STOCKTON - Physically departed for more than six months, the spirit of John Morearty seemed very much alive at the city's Earth Day Festival on Sunday afternoon at Victory Park.

The essence of the self-described "peacenik carpenter" perhaps was strongest at the Peace and Justice Network table, at the Boggs Tract Community Farm display and at the environmentally based obstacle course set up by 60 students and Bear Creek High School science teacher Steve Meredith.

But Morearty's spirit probably also floated through the air when butterflies were released, when a representative from the San Joaquin County Mosquito and Vector Control District discussed a display of larva-gobbling guppies, and in the music resonating from the festival's stage.

"He really is missed," said Richard Blackston, standing at the Peace and Justice Network table. "On my cellphone, I still keep the last two messages I got from him. When I need cheering up, I can always listen to him.

"John was kind of one of those renaissance men. The last time I sat down talking to him, it was about wind generation. If you look at all the groups here, in some way he touched most of them."

The 74-year-old Morearty, a community activist and former philosophy professor at University of the Pacific, died of cancer in October. The city's 25th Earth Day Festival, an all-volunteer event, embodied what he stood for, said Blackston and others who knew him. Until last year, when he first became ill, Morearty was always at the festival, they said - a smile on his face and his customary knit hat perched atop his head.

"He was an activist and a really smart guy, a really nice guy," said Eric Firpo, who manages the Boggs Tract farm. "He helped get the farm off the ground and did a lot of work before we planted a single seed."

Firpo's words were echoed by Jeremy Terhune, who is the director of the nonprofit that spearheads the Boggs Tract project and runs the Friends of the Lower Calaveras River advocacy group.

"There's definitely a vacuum without having (Morearty) here," Terhune said. "This event was very important to him. He was all about connecting people with different world views and causes under the banner of making the world a better place to live."

As always, the Earth Day Festival attracted emissaries from an eclectic range. Among those represented and offering information or activities were the Cleveland School Shooting Survivors advocacy group, the Emergency Food Bank and the Port City Roller Girls. Whether Morearty's interests ranged to roller derby might never be known, but who could truly rule it out?

Meredith, the Bear Creek teacher, dedicated his school's festival table to Morearty and to retired Pacific biology professor Alice Hunter, who died last month. She was 89. Hunter's approach in educating students about the environment was to teach them it "was something not just to study but something that is part of you," Meredith said.

Morearty, Meredith said, was "jovial, and never did his wandering spirit stop."

"People come and go," Meredith added, "and then there are people who really have an influence in their local community."